His mind turned to mush around her. “I have to get to the grange hall,” he said when he could think of no answer for her, no good reason not to go on kissing her all night and all the next day.
“Let me just get my coat on,” she said, but he put a hand on her arm as she walked past him.
“You better go freshen up some first,” he said, winding one of her curls around his finger.
“Do I look as if I’ve been well kissed?” she asked him. He didn’t know how she did it, this woman child who was red-hot innocence—a paradox if ever there was one.
He leaned down slightly, lifting her chin with just one finger, and answered, “Almost.” Then he dipped his head and took one long draft of all that was Abby, swearing to himself that it would be the last draft, the last time that he took her into his arms, that he kissed her, that he let his heart wish that maybe, just maybe it could be.
When he was done he had to steady her on her feet and couldn’t help laughing at his little siren.
“Didn’t that man in St. Louis kiss you like that?” he asked.
“What man in—” she began, little phony that she was, playing games with him. She looked thoughtful, then finally said, “Oh, Armand! You must think I’m a faithless hussy, but kissing him was just so different. So different!” She looked in the little framed mirror on his wall and patted at her hair. “Well, we’d best get going, or we’ll be late.”
So then, had she, or hadn’t she? Was she just pretending about Armand? One of her infinite fabrications? If so, where had she learned to kiss like that? Where had she learned the art of seduction? “Different how?”
“Well,” she said, turning and giving him that damn bright smile of hers. “In between kisses he told me he did love me.”
“And did that make you as dizzy as I did?” he asked, as if he were in some sort of competition with some man he didn’t know for the hand of a woman he didn’t want. Well, he wanted the woman, but not the … she really did tie his brain into a knot!
“Kissing him was a dream,” she said with a great sigh as she wrapped her cloak around herself.
“He kissed you. I kissed you. How many others are there?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest while she took one last look in the mirror, examined her lips and apparently found them satisfactory.
When she finally turned to present herself to him, she laughed, and said, “Why, Seth Hendon! And I thought you knew everything about me.” And then she reached around him for the doorknob, brushing against him as she did.
He’d thought he knew everything about her, too. He was sure of it.
But that was before he’d kissed her.
HE IS NOT ALLOWED IN THIS HOUSE!” HER FATHER grumbled when they finally got home after the meeting at the grange hall. “Add that to my list!”
So far Seth wasn’t allowed on their street, in their garden, on their porch. He wasn’t welcome to Sunday dinner, he wasn’t invited to any future parties they would ever host, and Abby’s father didn’t even want Seth to attend his funeral, whenever that happened to be.
“And you are not to speak to him, to dine with him, and needless to say, keep company, kiss, or marry him, young lady!”
Too late Abby thought, smiling to herself. Much too late. Oh, could Seth Hendon kiss! She was positively weak in the knees at just the thought. Had he not held her up, she’d have been a melted puddle of woman on his office floor.
“I should send you to your room,” her father continued, while her sisters came to see what all the commotion was about and her mother took off her coat and headed for the kitchen, no doubt to put up some tea to calm her husband down. “But then you wouldn’t hear me yelling from there. I should probably disown you, but then I couldn’t tell you what to do anymore….”
“She only spoke her mind,” Jedediah said.
“A woman’s mind belongs to her father until she is married and to her husband after that. Did I say already that you won’t be marrying him?” he asked.
“‘A woman’s mind belongs to’ … you can’t be serious, Father. A woman has enough curses in life, bears enough burdens—”
“That her mind shouldn’t be one of them,” her father cut in. “Do you think that your mother would ever voice an opinion that wasn’t mine?”
“Well, I’d certainly like to think so,” Abby said. “Otherwise why not just cut out our tongues when we’re born? That way we’d never say anything that’d displease you.”
Her mother had come back into the room. With her sisters there, they stood four women to two men, and Jed certainly seemed to be on their side.
“It’s just like a woman to be as silly as all that,” her father said. “You know quite well that I think women have a lot to say—some of it even worth listening to, especially in the house and in the garden. But what to do with Joseph Panner’s money, well, that’s just not their business. They can’t possibly understand—”
“I understood everything that was said at that meeting, Ezra,” her mother said firmly. “And I didn’t raise five children so that three of them could stand mute while matters that affect them were being decided.”
“Now look! You’ve turned your mother against me,” her father roared, wagging a finger in her face. “I always listen when your mother is thinking. But it’s something we do in private. When we’re outside of this house, in a public place, for you to side against me—”
“I didn’t side against you,” Abby said. “You know I never would. I simply said that it was a matter of priorities. You could hold services in the grange hall, but Dr. Hendon could not operate on Johnnie Youtt there, now could he?”
“I heard you in the grange hall, Abidance,” her father said, sitting down in his chair with a huff and crossing his arms over his chest. “Mother, we named all of our children wrong. Well, all the girls. The boys we gave real names to, but Patience isn’t, Prudence wasn’t, and Abidance won’t!”
Her mother smiled that indulgent smile reserved for those she loved. “If one of my children needed an operation, Ezra, I’d want Dr. Hendon to have a safe place to do it. And it isn’t as if he’s asking for himself. He’s asking for all of us.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Abby said. Finally a voice of reason.
“And I’m asking for myself?” her father asked petulantly. “Is that what you’re saying?”
She let out a big sigh. There was obviously no use. Tomorrow she would write an editorial for the paper advocating the use of the funds from Joseph Panner’s estate to build a medical facility. Her father had been invited by Ansel to write an opposing editorial urging the erection of a new church. It had been agreed that in two weeks, at the town’s regular meeting, a motion would be made, a discussion would follow, and ultimately a vote would be taken on the disposition of the funds.
Obviously her father did not think there was anything to discuss. “A waste of everybody’s free time,” he said. “How can there even be a question? As I told everybody, Dr. Hendon’s been practicing here for ten years in the same house that Doc Spinner practiced in for twenty before that. I’ve been supporting the doctor for years. Didn’t I have a bowl at the back of the church for the sick? Without the church where would we put that bowl? The town needs a church with that money and that is how this family will vote.”
“Not me,” Abby said. “I will vote—”
“You won’t vote at all, young lady. This is a matter for the town council—”
“All men,” Abby cried. “Oh, no. This is going to affect every single citizen in this town. And therefore it should be voted on by every citizen.” Now she had two editorials to write. And a headache that throbbed with every deep breath she took, not to mention all the shouting.
“We’ve always voted before,” her mother said. “At least, I have, and now that the girls are young women, I think that they are entitled to vote, too.”
Her father looked as if her mother had plunged a dagger into his heart.
“I’m going to bed,” Abby said softly so that
she wouldn’t hurt her head any more than it already hurt. She supposed that her pain was nothing compared to her father’s.
And she couldn’t help but wonder, as she crawled under the covers, what Seth was thinking alone in his room above his office. Was he thinking about how she had stood up for him at the meeting, said that a doctor’s hands were as good as tied if he couldn’t operate safely? Said that there could come a time when each and every one of them would regret not building for Seth exactly what he needed?
Or was he thinking of earlier in the evening, when he’d kissed her? Smiling in the darkness she thought of the feel of his lips pressed against hers. He’d closed his eyes while he’d kissed her—a kiss that was the stuff of dreams.
Seth still had Miss Ella Welsh on his mind the next day when he scrawled a hasty note on his blackboard and headed for The Weekly Herald’s office. The woman had come to him complaining of chest pains, and was quick to show him a chest that certainly explained Joseph Panner’s interest in her. She was vague about her pains, but clear as a bell about her intentions. She wanted him to know that Joseph had left her his house. And she was lonely in it.
He suspected she wouldn’t be lonely for long, but didn’t volunteer to make any house calls anytime soon. She’d looked pretty disappointed, but, like all the women he’d ever met, she made it clear that while he might be saying no, she wasn’t hearing it.
He pushed open the door to the newspaper office and stepped in out of the cold to hear Ansel asking Abby, “Well, that’s not so bad. So now he won’t even recite the Gospel to you?”
‘Ssh!” he heard Abby say as she pulled the glasses from her nose and smiled at him.
“For heaven’s sake, put them back on,” Seth told her, “before you have people boycotting that sweet Mrs. Winston’s millinery because of the new, larger bats that can be found filling her front room!”
“I never wrote that!” she cried indignantly before casting a glance at Ansel. “Did I?”
Ansel merely shrugged, apparently not in the mood for light talk. “Can I help you, Dr. Hendon?” he asked, and rather formally, it seemed to Seth.
“I brought over the article on frostbite,” Seth said, taking it from his inside coat pocket. “According to the almanac, we’re in for one last cold snap that could be pretty severe.”
Ansel made no response.
“It’s already pretty cold in here,” Seth said. “Have I done something …” He let the words trail off. Had Abby told Ansel that he’d kissed her?
“It’s not you,” Ansel said, staring at Abby and shaking his head.
“I spoke my mind. I thought you would applaud me for that,” she said.
“I do applaud you. And I applaud Doc, here, too. And I’d probably applaud a trained monkey, but that doesn’t help anything, does it?”
“What exactly needs helping?” Seth asked, an uneasy feeling creeping up his spine.
“My father is angry that I have a thought in my head that doesn’t come straight from him. He doesn’t feel I should have an opinion if it differs from his. I suppose I’m fortunate that they don’t ordain women in the Methodist Church or I’d have to be a reverend just because he is … which reminds me, Ansel, that you went up against him yourself and now you’re telling me—”
“Abby, much as you hate to recognize this, you are a woman. I could just move out of the house, take a wife, make a life for myself. You—”
“I could move out of that house tomorrow,” Abby said, taking off the printer’s apron she wore. “And I don’t need a husband to do my thinking for me. I don’t have to be at that man’s mercy, or any man’s mercy, and—”
“Don’t be an idiot, Abidance,” Ansel said. “Where would you go? I don’t think you’ve saved ten dollars that I’ve paid you—”
“For now, I could move in with you and Emily,” she said, but the look on Ansel’s face seemed to say that wasn’t even a remote possibility.
“Then I could move into Seth’s spare room,” she said.
Now she had Ansel looking at him accusingly, as if he’d ever offered such a thing, as if he’d ever allow it. He didn’t even consider Sarrie’s room a spare and putting everything else aside, which he certainly wasn’t, he couldn’t possibly bear the thought of Abby in Sarrie’s bed. “You aren’t moving anywhere,” he told Abidance, and the words rang familiarly to him from some dark corner of his mind. Ah, yes. All those years ago when he’d found Sarrie and Abby at the train station, tickets in hand, the two of them vowing to move to St. Louis.
“You aren’t moving anywhere,” he had said then, and he repeated it now. Why was it that every time he began to think of Abby as a grown woman, a very kissable grown woman, something had to remind him that she was the same little girl who had stolen all of his bandages to wrap his sister in when they were playing nurse.
“They won’t talk to her,” Ansel said. “At least he won’t, and they won’t cross him, so if he’s around, they won’t talk to her either.”
“Your family?” Seth asked incredulously. “Your father? He’s that angry about my wanting to build a hospital?”
Abby shrugged, and Ansel said, “He feels she betrayed him, speaking out against the church last night. He’s declared you the enemy and he’s forbidden her to see you or—”
“Ansel!” she shouted at him. Clearly this was something he had been asked not to reveal. She looked at Seth with her chin raised proudly. “He can’t tell me what to do.”
All Seth wanted was a place to do some simple procedures safely. He didn’t want Massachusetts General Hospital, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t even as if he planned to stay in Eden’s Grove. But a first-rate clinic with modern equipment would make finding a replacement so much easier. Still, he didn’t think the clinic was worth Abby’s having a falling-out with her family. When he moved away, they would be all she had left.
But he didn’t say any of that. Instead he put the article on the desk that separated him from Abby and Ansel and rebuttoned his top coat.
“I have no intention of listening to a word he says,” Abby said.
“Especially if he isn’t talking to you,” Ansel added on.
“Maybe not,” Seth said, picking up her glasses and placing them on her nose, tucking the wires over her ears as if she were a china doll. “But I do.”
“You’re giving in? You want to vote to use the money for a new church, when the grange hall accommodates everyone for Sunday services?”
“No, I’m adamant about the clinic,” he said as he turned to leave. “But if your father doesn’t want you talking to me, I guess I have to respect his wishes. A father does have—”
“—Rocks in his head if he thinks he can tell me what to think, how to vote, or who to talk to,” she said with a huff, banging her hand down on the table and then yelping in pain.
She grabbed the hand she’d hit with her good one and clutched it to her body. She took a deep uneven breath with her mouth wide open.
“Jeez, did you break it?” Ansel asked, laying down the tray of type he was holding.
Seth saw the blood oozing out between her fingers. He saw the short spike on the countertop and for the first time in his medical career, he felt weak in the stomach.
“Damn it!” he shouted, pulling out his handkerchief and grabbing her hand to have a look at it. “You’re going to need stitches. Two. Maybe three.”
“I’m fine,” she said, trying to take her hand back as if she could just will herself well. He’d been standing right there. If only he hadn’t made her mad, if only he’d noticed the spike, if only he’d done something, anything, to stop this from happening.
“You are not fine,” he heard himself saying more loudly than necessary. “You are bleeding profusely. Do you feel faint?”
“No,” she said as if she were afraid that he’d yell at her if she was.
“Damn,” he said again. “This is deep. Do you think you can walk to my office?”
“Yes,” she said stoically, not
Of course I can. Not Certainly. He didn’t know if she was afraid of him or the blood or what, but when she came around the counter he didn’t like the color of her face. Scooping her up in his arms, he told Ansel to get the door, and he carried her—with no objection from her, which scared him more—to his office, where Ansel once again opened the door and got out of Seth’s way.
Gently he laid her down on the examining room table and lit the lamp beside it so that he could see the damage clearly. He showed Ansel how to apply pressure to Abby’s hand and then with a squeeze to her shoulder he assured her he just needed to get a few things and that he would be right back.
His brain refused to work. The office he’d worked in for eleven years appeared rearranged, so that now, when he needed them, he could find neither his needle nor his boiled silk thread. Someone had hidden his bottle of carbolic acid.
“Does it hurt much?” he heard Ansel ask Abby, and he grabbed the things he needed, which by some miracle now seemed to appear in the exact places he’d already looked for them.
He came back to her side, apologizing for how long he’d taken, apologizing for how much it would hurt. At least, he thought he was apologizing until Ansel insisted that he stop yelling at her, and Seth realized he’d raised his voice again, even while he was trying to tell her how sorry he was that he would have to cause her pain.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ansel asked. “Do you treat all your patients like this?”
Only the ones I love, he thought. Because I couldn’t stop the accident from happening, because I can’t make it just go away, and that makes me angry. He closed his eyes for a moment and shut out the thoughts. He had work to do.
“Ansel, go around to the other side and hold her other hand. Abby, you keep your eyes on Ansel.” He glanced quickly at her face, willing her to look at her brother, and then bent to the task.
“Don’t you think the weather’s getting warmer,” she asked suddenly, breaking the silence in the room. “I think spring is just around the corner.”
“I think your father’s probably around the corner and not likely to be pleased that you’re here in my care,” Seth said, reminding himself that there were a million reasons why he couldn’t love Abidance Merganser.
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